Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
Category: Biology
If yeast can make alcohol directly out of starch, why bother malting the barley before making beer?
Posted by Martin R at 8:21 AM • 12 Comments •
Aardvarchaeology
Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.
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Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
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- Odin from Lejre? No, it's Freya!
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Blogroll
Good Blog Carnivals
Food:
Marzipan Gold Hoard
Category: Archaeology
In 1995 a gold hoard was found at Vittene in Norra Björke parish, Västergötland. Its contents had been amassed over two centuries, and it was committed to the earth in the 3rd century AD.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
Motte and Bailey and Limburger Cheese
Category: Travel
I type this in the hotel lobby while waiting for the train just across the street that will take me to Brussels. The conference closed at 13, I had sandwiches with my colleagues and then set out again for...
Posted by Martin R at 10:44 AM • 8 Comments •
Velvet Bolete Orgy
Category: Food
My wife and I made a short mushrooming excursion to Lake Lundsjön after lunch. Little more than half an hour in the woods garnered us only four species, but huge amounts of one: velvet bolete. We went home early...
Posted by Martin R at 10:57 AM • 4 Comments •
Marsh Meringue
Category: Language
Here are two pieces of convoluted Scandy and English etymology that converge in my head.
Posted by Martin R at 8:21 AM • 7 Comments •
Stockholm Blogmeet 2 September
Category: Blogging
The 6th Aardvarchaeology blogmeet was a friendly three-hour affair with good food, good drink and good company. 'Twas me, Kai, Mårten, Per G, Sigmund, Thinker and Tor, and an excellent time was had at Akkurat. Here's the historical record...
Posted by Martin R at 3:54 PM • 18 Comments •
Me And My Tea
Category: Food
I love black tea, and by that I mean brews from leaves of Camellia sinensis and C. s. assamica, nothing else, milk and sugar please. Earl Grey is basically Assam flavoured with oil of bergamot, a citrus fruit. It's OK...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 27 Comments •
Chanterelle Season
Category: Food
Yesterday saw the season's first mushroom expedition. A bit early for real diversity, with only four edible species collected, but on the other hand we found quite a lot of chanterelles.Chanterelle, Kantarell, Cantharellus cibarius Birch bolete, Björksopp, Leccinum scabrum...
Posted by Martin R at 2:05 PM • 3 Comments •
Plastic Pork Phone Decoration
Category: China
Courtesy of my niece-in-law in Hangzhou, here's a piece of plastic hong shao rou, 紅燒肉, red braised pork, intended as a cell phone decoration. Yum!...
Posted by Martin R at 4:21 PM • 4 Comments •
North European Natural Caffeine Source?
Category: Biology
Most psychoactive substances only occur in a small group of closely related plants. But caffeine pops up in widely divergent branches of the floral kingdom.
Posted by Martin R at 9:53 AM • 7 Comments •
Energy is Good, Calories are Bad
Category: Skepticism
What newagers, health nuts and alties seem to be completely ignorant of is that both words originate in physics and that they refer to the same thing.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 15 Comments •
May Entertainments
Category: Tree House Ruins
One of these men is an extremely zany comics artist and celebrated wit. The other is a stuffy scholar in an abstruse field. We've had a three-day holiday thanks to Friday being 1 May -- a red-letter day in...
Posted by Martin R at 3:20 PM • 3 Comments •
Hellish Yoghurt Diversification
Category: Food
There is a genre of complaints that I usually find a little silly: the Starbucks breakdown, which occurs when somebody's offered too many options. But now I've run into the problem myself. Yoghurt diversification. I buy most of our milk...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
Hard Core Finnish Easter Dessert
Category: Food
It looks like chocolate fudge cake. It tastes like compact sour-dough rye bread and molasses. It is basically compact sour-dough rye bread and molasses. You have it at Easter, cold, with cream and sugar. It is a Finnish thing....
Posted by Martin R at 8:45 AM • 19 Comments •
Beer Geek Website
Category: Food
When I give talks about Internet subcultures I like to say that I could devote the entire talk to on-line forums for retired Spanish-speaking transvestites. That's how niched groups a global communication network makes possible. Myself, I'm on a Swedish...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
Bagels of the Eastern Geats
Category: Food
Yesterday I made boiled pretzels from Horn, which are basically slightly sweet bagels.
Posted by Martin R at 8:21 AM • 9 Comments •
Mushroom Harvest
Category: Biology
Today we had eleven kinds, most of them hedgehogs and boletes.
Posted by Martin R at 9:15 AM • 16 Comments •
Orkney Food
Category: Food
I'm in the Bangladeshi restaurant Dil Se having a nice chicken achari. I tried to get Orkney mutton, but it was only available on advance order. Seems fitting to have a curry even in this storm-swept outpost of the British...
Posted by Martin R at 4:40 PM • 6 Comments •
Tap Water is Not a Naturally Occurring Substance
Category: Biology
Water suppliers use natural water to make tap water.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 25 Comments •
Onion Peel Egg Dye
Category: Art
There's actually a use for onion peel. Wrap it around an egg, wrap egg and peel in aluminium foil, and boil the egg the usual way. Red onion peel dyes the shell yellow, while yellow onion peel dyes it...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 11 Comments •
Build Your Life on Eternal Truths
Category: Travel
I just popped out for a burger at Arbee's, and I chose a seat with a good view of the full moon riding high over a Shell gas station. On the wall of the station was a large luminescent...
Posted by Martin R at 6:53 PM • 9 Comments •
Carrot-Eating Video Game Zombies
Category: Children
To get kids to eat veggies, hand them out while they play video games.
Posted by Martin R at 7:46 AM • 3 Comments •
Speaking of Meat in Post-Conquest Britain
Category: History
The elite talked about meat in French at the dinner table.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 28 Comments •
Quest for Dick (Spotted) 2
Category: Food
The aroma is lemony sweet with a hint of savour from the beef tallow.
Posted by Martin R at 2:00 AM • 15 Comments •
Quest for Dick (Spotted) 1
Category: Food
Spotted Dick is a steamed, massive, doughy thing. It must be mine.
Posted by Martin R at 8:10 AM • 14 Comments •
Mongolian Cuisine and Cursing
Category: Humour
Dining with polyglot friends (he's a Sinologist who also works with Georgian and Basque and speaks a bewildering variety of Asian languages, she interprets Mongolian and speaks the most exquisite Swedish), my wife and I learned something about Mongolian...
Posted by Martin R at 9:05 AM • 0 Comments •
Unexpected Chicken Sausage
Category: Food
My wife just hit me with some pretty heavy surrealism, suddenly handing me a foot-long yellow can of spicy Turkish chicken sausage. Her mother is visiting with us. The other day, this lady had an appointment with her acupuncturist...
Posted by Martin R at 2:19 PM • 13 Comments •
Cephalopod Noodle Soup
Category: Food
Here's one for Peezee....
Posted by Martin R at 12:11 AM • 3 Comments •
